Converting to Mallard?

[Matthew East]

Hi,

On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 12:49 AM, Kyle Nitzsche
<kyle.nitzsche at canonical.com> wrote:
> Hi Phil and all,
>
> 1) Does this approach (using upstream/Gnome help and adding
> Ubuntu-specific content to stub locations therein) support removing
> upstream content?

To an extent, this points have already been made and addressed on the
mailing list before, but I'll chip in my view again.

As far as I'm aware, Mallard doesn't address the ability to customise
(i.e. remove or modify) upstream content. What Mallard adds is the
ability to add content more easily than before.

A downstream provider always has the ability to customise content that
it is using from upstream. At present, we haven't done a very good job
of ensuring that the Gnome content present in our help is consistent
with the changes that Ubuntu makes to Gnome software. We need to do a
better job of this. If Gnome's documentation moves to a structure and
style that is more consistent with our own goals (which it will), then
I definitely support an approach which uses it more heavily.

The move to topic based help upstream should make customisation easier
than it is with the current style, simply because sections and files
will be more manageable in version control.

> 2) Is the upstream/Gnome content really the best for Ubuntu? Even though
> it may simplify development and maintenance, the value to the Ubuntu
> user should perhaps be a higher priority. There should be a systematic
> analysis of Gnome help content with discussion to determine whether it
> is right for Ubuntu before serious considering it.

As Phil and others have pointed out, Gnome content is about to be
entirely rewritten. In the circumstances, a systematic analysis of
Gnome help content to see whether it is of value to our users is not
possible. However, it's fair to start from a working assumption that
Gnome also cares about its users. It's also worth noting that there is
a fairly large overlap between Gnome's users and Ubuntu's users, and a
huge overlap between the default Gnome desktop and Ubuntu's desktop.

Although we can't guarantee yet that Gnome help content will be right
for Ubuntu in Ubuntu 10.10, we have an opportunity here to contribute
to the direction that Gnome documentation will take. Phil and Milo,
among others, are doing that. I think that's excellent and important.

I don't personally know whether it will be possible in this release
cycle to evaluate, plan and implement the approach which Phil has
described, because I think that we'll need to wait and see how the new
Gnome help comes out, and I'd be surprised it that is ready early in
the cycle enough for us. However let's see, and in the meantime, I'd
very much encourage all team members and contributors to assist with
Gnome's planning of their new help, and if possible the writing of it
too. In particular the questions that Phil raises about planning where
to draw a upstream/distro divide in particular topics are going to be
very interesting and will benefit from our input.

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF